In the field of information technology (IT), change management generally refers to a system or process for managing change activities to the IT environment. During day to day operations in a data center there are change activities to modify software or hardware components in an equipment cabinet residing in a data center. These changes must be carefully coordinated with system owners and data center owners via a change management process so impact to business operations is minimized or eliminated.
When human resources are relied upon to assess the impact of proposed changes to often intricate information technology infrastructures, even well planned and well organized changes can fail. In fact, many leading information technology analysts have indicated that failed changes are often a major cause of system outages and errors, which may result in a business suffering negative consequences such as financial loss, project delays, customer dissatisfaction, etc.
Change management procedures involve manually creating change requests (uniquely identified with a change request identification number) that specifies, among other things, which device will be undergoing change activity, the nature of the change, the date and time the change activity is scheduled to occur, as well as the individuals that will be performing the change. A change request will have from one to many “approvers” that have a vested interest in the change activity, either via an end-user, system owner, or interested party role. However, in the quest for expediency, or simply through negligence, the change management process is at times not followed, and activities are performed without required approvals. This often occurs during periods when this activity could be performed and undetected. This is referred to as an “unauthorized change.”
A more efficient change management process may reduce costs and unauthorized changes and improve productivity and system up-time.